Intelligent design
Intelligent design (ID) is a quasi-scientific set of beliefs which state that life is the product of an intelligent designer. ID is in direct opposition to the Darwin's theory of evolution and most modern ideas and theories or life and its evolution.
Some opponents of ID say it serves primarily as a big tent under which to rally all sorts of creationists; the godfather of the ID movement, the UC Berkeley law professor Phillip Johnson (now emeritus), is quoted as saying that issues such as the age of the earth can be taken up once the common enemy of evolution has been done away with. In my revisions to the article, I've tried to make it clear that ID is studiedly noncommital on these issues, but I may have missed a passage or two, so let me repeat: the only consistent message of ID is that evolution is bad. Everything else is up for grabs.
Intelligent Design differs from creationism on two closely related points.
- First, ID is silent regarding geologists' estimates for the age of the Earth (billions of years), while Biblical literalists say the earth was created only 6,000 years ago. Many ID proponents are old-earth creationists, who accept the antiquity of the Earth, but some, e.g. John Mark Reynolds and Paul Nelson, are young-earth creationists.
- Second, ID is silent regarding biologists' estimates of when the various species of life appeared and disappeared, according to the fossil record, although many proponents of ID express willingness to agree with them, while others, especially young-earth creationists (including Biblical literalists), disagree.
(N.b. the entry previously had a third point, that ID accepts the principle of Natural Selection. It is unclear why this was thought to distinguish ID from other forms of creationism, which generally do accept natural selection but restrict its workings to within [never-defined] "kinds". As with the other two points, ID is studiedly noncommital about its positive claims.)
Intelligent Design and the Theory of Evolution
Where ID parts company from the rest of creationism is where it begins to agree with Darwinian evolution. These agreements end rather quickly, though, and the remainder of this article attempts to clarify Intelligent Design's character by elaborating the features that distinguish it from the generally accepted scientific view of evolution.
The generally accepted view of evolution is based on two premises. Variations occur in the genetic makeup of organisms, and through the process of natural selection, the most fit of those variations survive while the others die out. (There are other forces at work in evolution, e.g., genetic drift, but it is natural selection plus random mutation that typically incurs ID's wrath, so focusing on these is a harmless oversimplification.)
Intelligent Design accepts much of evolutionary theory, but differs in one crucial aspect -- it insists that there is empirical evidence that an intelligent designer or designer has been at work in the history of life. ID proponents are typically coy about identifying the designer, but for most of them there is no serious doubt that it is the Judeo-Christian concept of God.
ID accepts that fact that there has been evolution, i.e., populations of species have changed and diverged over time. It may or may not accept that there is speciation, the creation of more than one species out of a single species.
Some proponents of ID accept the fossil record as an accurate representation of the history of the evolution of species, and accept that analysis of the fossil record gives accurate and useful results; others do not.
It accepts that there is a process of natural selection, although it may insist that the results of this process must be limited. Once the variation has been caused due to deliberate acts of God, or the unnamed intelligent designer, the survival or extinction of a newly arisen species is believed to then be subject to natural selection, although further acts of God are not ruled out.
In the scientific view, genetic variations are random with respect to fitness. In the Intelligent Design viewpoint, these random variations exist but are not the explanation for the appearance of new species. Instead, new species arise when God steps in and causes significant variation to occur. (Actually, this expresses what's usually called progressive creationism; although some PCs are in the ID camp, not all ID proponents are PCs.)
Adherents of Intelligent Design call the idea that God causes new species to come into being a viable scientific hypothesis (see scientific creationism). Nearly all scientists consider it pseudounscientific, on the grounds that it is an amalgam of false or unsupported claims within the realm of science and of philosophical or religious claims outside the realm of science.
Further Reading:
- Michael J. Behe: Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution, Free Press 1996. Argues that several exquisite biochemical mechanisms could not have arisen by a sequence of random mutations and selection.
- Ernst Mayr: One Long Argument: Charles Darwin and the Genesis of Modern Evolutionary Thought, Harvard University Press 1993. Explanation of the evidence behind the mainstream evolutionary theory.
- Kenneth R. Miller: Finding Darwin's God, HarperCollins 1999. A cell biologist (and devout Christian) pokes holes in intelligent design theory.
- Robert T. Pennock: Tower of Babel: The Evidence against the New Creationism, MIT Press 1999. A philosopher pokes holes in intelligent design theory.
- Intelligent Design Creationism and its Critics, ed. Robert T. Pennock, MIT Press 2002. A comprehensive anthology.
Advocates of intelligent design argue that the biological evidence presents serious problems for macroevolution. For example, they claim that all the major types of animals appeared at the same time in the fossil record, with no evidence of common ancestry--a pattern they say is inconsistent with Darwin's theory. However, modern evolutionary biologists concept of evolution goes beyond the gradulistic mechanism proposed by Darwin in the 19th century. Better evidence gathered since the time of Darwin has shown that evolution occurs at a steady Darwinian rate until a large environmental change occurs (such as an ice age, asteroid impact or very large volcanic eruption). Evolution then occurs at a greatly accelerated rate. Those that adhere to the concept of intelligent design seem to ignore the modern concept of evolution, say many scientists.
They also argued that complex organs that cannot function without all their parts provide evidence for a cause having intelligence. Usually, this intelligence is attributed to God.
This may be considered an outgrowth of the idea, held by some, that some biological developments are too complex to have come about without having been designed. This idea is particularly pressed by Michael J. Behe under the rubric irreducible complexity in his Darwin's Black Box (1996; see reference above). See also : argument from design.
Proponents of Intelligent Design point to complex biological structures such as the eye, bird's wings, the existence of mitochondria, etc., arguing that such structures could not have possibly have developed due purely to random mutations, even with the aid of natural selection. Symbiotic relationships, such as plants who can only be pollinated by a specific species of insect, which in turn can only reproduce by using the plant, could not have arisen, they argue--a typical chicken-and-egg problem. It is argued that these kinds of biological features are by their very nature too interdependent to come into existence independently through a natural process and then become as intricately intertwined.
Intelligent design does not necessarily claim that living things came together suddenly in their present form through the efforts of a supernatural creator. William A. Dembski, a major ID writer, has calimed that intelligent design is not a doctrine of creation. Intelligent design merely concerns itself with features of natural objects that reliably signal the action of an intelligence, whatever that intelligence might be.
Criticism of Intelligent Design
Some Intelligent Design arguments fall to later scientific study, critics say. For example, the development of mitochondria was once puzzling, but Lynn Margulis's theory of their evolution from endosymbiotic bacteria, once rejected even by biologists, has amassed enough evidence that it is now widely accepted. Evolutionary development of such structures as eyes and wings has been simulated in computers. Studies of fig wasps have revealed how symbotic species can evolve. Most scientists assume that all "problems" that Intelligent Design proponents show will be similarly resolved with further progress of science and assert that proponents of intelligent design fall victim to the fallacy of argument by lack of imagination.
However, the term "intelligent design" has a broader usage than that given in the Intelligent Design Theory. It can refer simply to the belief that God designed the universe, without any specific claim as to how or when he did so. Many people consider this belief entirely compatible with standard Darwinian evolution, with no divine intervention -- life could be produced by a purely natural process, evolution, designed by God. God might merely have written the laws of physics, or chosen the fundamental constants, and left the universe to run like clockwork afterwards. This would be a form of deism. The belief that the laws of the universe were constructed to allow for the existence of intelligent life is known as the Anthropic Cosmological Principle. A more theologically robust view is theistic evolution (see e.g. Kenneth R. Miller's ""Finding Darwin's God"" cited above), where, far from being a hands-off deity, God continually oversees and sustains the processes of evolution.
Not all people who believe that God was involved in the design of the Universe also adhere to the specifics of the Intelligent Design belief as proposed by Creationists.
Intelligent Design has lately been a controversial subject, particularly in American schools. After years of judicial rejection of Creationist teaching--on the grounds that Creationism is a religious, not a scientific theory--many Creationists have begun to promote Intelligent Design as a non-religious, scientifically acceptable alternative to the theory of Evolution. However, this attempt has met with strong opposition from some theologians. In order to be non-religious, one must argue that the intelligent being who designed the universe is not necessarily the same as the religious God. This view has been criticized as allowing for the existence of a demiurge and for being periliously close to Gnosticism, which is considered heretical by most Christian groups.
See: Creationism, evolution, theory of evolution, falsifiability, protoscience, pseudoscience
External links:
- Entry about Intelligent Design in the "The Skeptic's Dictionary" by Robert Todd Carroll:
- Intelligent Design FAQ